Credit

Caption

Inquisition religious procession, 19th-century artwork. This procession, known as an auto-de-fe (Spanish: act of faith), is a specific ritual of public penance associated with the Spanish or Portuguese inquisitions. They were religious events, where those who stood accused as heretics, or who had renounced the Catholic religion (apostates), were paraded in public to a central location where their punishment was announced. The sentence was often to be burned at the stake. Many such processions took place, the first known Spanish one in 1481, and the last known taking place in Mexico in 1850. This woodcut dates from 1880.